In wide areas of the foods industry, foams are used for the production of foods and/or luxury foods. These foams have in the first place, the advantage that they increase the enjoyment value of the particular product, and secondly, the volume will be increased by beating in some air.
Two classical examples of these food foams are whipped cream and ice cream. The volume of both products is increased to about double by the incorporation of air. The fine distribution of the air bubbles is an essential quality criterion both for ice cream as well as for whipped cream. In both the aforementioned products, it is only this incorporation of air which makes the product suitable for consumption:
In whipped cream, the high fat content would essentially prohibit the product's consumption in its original liquid form.
In ice cream, the incorporation of air results in the ice cream attaining a creamy consistency; without the incorporation of air, it is merely a solid-frozen block.
The technologies for continuous aeration (incorporation of air) in whipped cream and ice cream manufacturing are known around the world. The technologies for whipped cream and ice cream do, indeed, differ from one another significantly, but their basic principle is nonetheless the same.
The distribution of deep-frozen products, and thus the sales of such, have more than doubled in recent year. Although deep-freezing was used initially only to keep vegetables fresh, the entire range of foodstuffs is presently available in the form of deep-frozen versions of all goods also available in fresh form. Having started with the deep-freezing of vegetables, the dissemination of deep-frozen food now ranges from ready-cooked meals to all types of bakery goods. Within this range of deep-frozen goods, ice cream occupies a special and significant rank. In fact, for ice cream this is the only possible marketing route, via a complete and uninterrupted deep-frozen chain. The industry has been making efforts to market cakes and gateaux on a whipped-cream basis in the form of deep-frozen products for some fifteen years. Continuously rising sales in this sector illustrate the great market potentials for this segment. The technology for manufacture of such deep-frozen cakes and gateaux is, however, largely underdeveloped, if one disregards the use of continuously operating automatic aerators.
Ice cream manufacturing technology has not undergone any further significant technical changes since the introduction of continuous cooling and freezing systems (freezers). Here, work is still conducted on the same principles as were used thirty years ago, if one disregards technical modifications concerned solely with control of the ice cream cooling and freezing system.